1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multimedia service apparatus and method for multimedia service providers outside home to UPnP devices inside home using a home gateway and a service gateway platform, and more particularly, to a multimedia service apparatus and method for multimedia service providers outside home to UPnP devices inside home using a home gateway and a service gateway platform in which the home gateway and the service gateway platform such as an open service gateway initiative (OSGi) service platform are used inside a home to allow the multimedia service providers outside home to provide and reproduce a multimedia content on a home network to and in a universal plug and play (UPnP) audio/video (AV) MediaRenderer following a UPnP AV structure based on UPnP, or store the multimedia content in a UPnP AV MediaServer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional method for providing a multimedia content from an outside home to a multimedia device inside home, when the multimedia device inside home operates as a client and requests a server of a service provider outside home for the multimedia content, the server outside home transmits the multimedia content to the multimedia device inside home through a home gateway. Accordingly, a user requests for content transmission through a user interface of the device inside home, and controls transmission. This method is performed using an inherent protocol of each multimedia service provider such as windows media services (WMS), real time streaming protocol (RTSP), and hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP). Therefore, each client needs the user interface using the inherent protocol. A UPnP AV structure is basically constructed suitably to UPnP AV devices positioned on an internal home network of a home gateway. Therefore, it is not suitable that the UPnP AV structure gets a multimedia service from the multimedia service provider not using UPnP outside home. In order to allow the multimedia service provider to provide the multimedia service for the UPnP device inside home using a UPnP protocol, the home gateway should perform a discovery and control using the UPnP protocol for a UPnP proxy. Accordingly, there is a drawback in that a new UPnP device in addition to a conventional inherent protocol should be constructed in the server treating the discovery and control.